Crossing on the Paris Page 9

  They would sit on the porch for hours, in all kinds of weather, holding hands and whispering earnestly. Now she could scarcely remember what they talked about, but she could never forget how she felt: the surprising newness every time he said her name, the cozy daydreams of a common future, the warm tingling when he kissed her on the lips. The wonders of first love.

  He had courted her for seven months and, had he stayed in America, Constance felt sure her parents would have deemed him a suitable match. But due to a family emergency he had been obliged to return to England. Although she was quite sure that her father would never have allowed her to live abroad, Nigel had not even asked. There were no harebrained schemes about meeting in London, no desperate entreaties to elope. When she went to the station to see him off, she already felt jilted; despite his kisses and tears, she knew they would never see each other again. That night, heart-broken, she sobbed her face into distortion—hideously red and swollen—then finally fell asleep.

  Shortly after Nigel’s departure, her father, with the intention of cheering his daughter up, had asked Constance to serve punch at an afternoon gathering for new professors. There, she met George Stone, a geography professor thirteen years her senior. When he came round the following day to pay a call, Faith delivered the news: “There’s a fossil in the parlor to see you.” A month later she found herself, with surprising swiftness and far too much formality, engaged to marry him. They had now been together eight years.

  “Dorothy! Eli! Oscar! Winifred!”

  The shrill sound of a woman’s voice stirred Constance from her thoughts. She turned her head toward the names being called and saw a stampede of towheaded children, their heavy shoes pounding down the teak deck, their bedraggled parents straggling behind. They stopped suddenly and swarmed over the deck chairs right next to her. The youngest was about the age of her oldest and the other three wavered around ten.

  “Good morning.” Constance nodded to the mother.

  “Hello, there!” she answered as her husband fell into a chair. “We’re the Andersons.”

  Constance felt the pang of this group introduction, keenly aware of her singularity next to them, “the Andersons,” a veritable clan. Should she introduce herself then by saying, “I am the Stone”?

  “Pleased to meet you all,” she said simply.

  Watching these children, she realized how much she missed her own. How delightful it would be to share this ocean voyage with her three young girls! She envisioned them there by her side, with little Susan toddling along the deck and the older two girls climbing up on the rails, scanning the seas for whales. And George? What would he be doing? She could imagine him engaged in endless conversations with her tedious dining companions, Mr. Thomas and Captain Fielding, discussing those topics that bored her so much: motorcars, hunting and fishing, their unequivocal admiration of Theodore Roosevelt . . . She thought their serious, masculine talk would suit him just fine.

  “I want to play deck tennis!” cried one towheaded Anderson.

  “No! Shuffleboard!” whined another.

  “You goose! Ping-Pong is much more fun!” insisted a third, rounding out his argument by sticking out his tongue.

  Their mother skillfully hushed them, then proposed a logical order of deck games. Before letting them fly off, she inquired whether they were hungry or thirsty, or needed the bathroom.

  “And Dorothy! Don’t take off your sweater!” she called.

  Constance looked at the little girl and smiled to find she was wearing gray patent leather shoes, Mary Jane silver slippers. When she was little she’d read the Oz books, desperately wishing for a cyclone to take her to a new world, to a new family with grown-ups who wanted nothing more than to take her by the hand and go off on an adventure. Adults who, although filled with straw or made of tin, were never dark and despondent, but fun-loving and kind. As a child, she had written stories about happy families: a pretty girl with adoring parents and loads of big brothers, living together on a beautiful farm. As an adult, she had tried her best to be a good mother, to shower her daughters with love, equally, all three.

  “Dorothy!” the mother cried again, pulling herself up and giving Constance an apologetic look before disappearing into the game area.

  Constance smiled to herself at the thought of how alike all mothers were: the same worries, complaints, challenges. Then, again, remembered her own.

  Tossing her head—a firm refusal to think of her mother—she pulled the banana out of her bag and, as she began to peel it, noticed the ship photographer and his assistant making their way down the deck. They were taking portraits of families and traveling companions, as well as those fast friends met on board. Taking small bites off her banana, she watched the groups posing at the rail. The assistant handed each assortment of people a ring-shaped life buoy with PARIS written on it and they made a formation around it, smiling.

  She watched a young couple (honeymooners, obviously) pose for the camera, his arms close around her, their smiles glowing and natural. She’d seen them earlier, snuggling in the same deck chair, furrowing their brows over that new craze, the crossword puzzle, and chewing on the same pencil. Their kisses still tingled, Constance thought, their daydreams were still cozy.

  A large family got up for their picture next. The assistant handed the life buoy to the youngest child, who peeked through it with a grin. Constance watched in amusement as the mother sang out, “Say cheese!” and, instantly, the children’s spontaneous smiles became pained and artificial: a tortured grimace, a wide-eyed snarl.

  The photographers then came to her chair.

  “A souvenir for the folks back home, ma’am?” asked the photographer, taking off his straw hat, his smile half-hidden by a large mustache.

  “No, thank you.” She shook her head. It seemed a sad sight to pose for the camera all by herself, banana in hand.

  “Oh, come on, ma’am! You’re already as pretty as a picture!” he said with a wink, as his assistant stood next to him, waving the life buoy enticingly. “Are you sure?”

  “Quite,” she said, picking up her book and staring into it until they moved on.

  Peeking up to watch them take their next photo—a couple of Texans, judging from their hats and boots—Constance wondered, if she were with Faith, would they have had their photograph made? She couldn’t imagine her sister smiling at her side on the Paris deck. If she were there, heading home, she would have looked like the grim victim, the condemned man. She then pictured her own family photo at the rails, the sea twinkling in the background. She would be next to George, holding little Susan, while Mary and Elizabeth stood in front, holding the buoy together. She snapped the shutter with her eyelids, seeing their familiar smiles. Would George be smiling too? She tried to envision him, but could only dredge up the image of the stern, formal photograph lying on the dresser in her cabin.

  With a glance down at her detective story, she imagined her husband going missing, and the gentlemen from Scotland Yard asking for his “distinguishing characteristics.” Try as she may, she could think of none. In fact, she feared, if George changed his coat and shaved his beard, she might not recognize him on the street!

  The photographers now gone, Constance stretched out her legs. With her book still in her hand, a finger marking her place, she walked up to the rail to the sound of shuffleboard pucks swishing along the teak floorboards—clack!—the odd shout, eruptions of laughter. It was a fine day and it seemed every person on board was outside, enjoying the sunshine.

  Absently looking down at the decks below, she suddenly noticed Dr. Chabron—without his white robe, but neat in a uniform—talking with a couple of crewmen. She was pleasantly surprised to find him there, away from the infirmary, and contemplated going down and thanking him for the fruit basket. Debating whether that would be considered too forward, she reached up to fix her hat and found she was still holding her detective story.

  Watching him chatting in the sun, gesturing with a cigarette, Constance thought pe
rhaps he would make a good character for a mystery novel: a dashing French doctor traveling the world on an elegant ocean liner. But what would be the intrigue behind his story? Would his wife suddenly vanish? No, not a wife. Would he be wrongly accused of an accidental poisoning? Or perhaps be a victim of blackmail? As Constance was working out a good story line, Dr. Chabron turned, tipped his hat to a group of young women, and walked out of view. Smiling, she entitled her nonexistent story “The Singular Affair of the Ship Surgeon.”

  Lingering at the rails, Constance considered going to see him at the infirmary, but after a few minutes’ deliberation, she decided to wait. Although she would enjoy his company, he was probably too busy to chat and she was, she had to admit, feeling fine.

  She sat back down and opened her book again, but after reading a page or two, she discovered that the dialogue of Hercule Poirot—peppered with bits of French—was clearly being spoken with the doctor’s voice. In her mind, she could hear his slight accent, its musical tone. She was laughing at herself when Mrs. Anderson, back from the game area and trying to relax, called to her.

  “Excuse me? Miss?”

  Constance looked over to find her holding out the ocean liner’s daily newspaper, L’Atlantique. It was opened to a page of photographs under the headline “The Paris Launch!”

  “I believe this is you!” She smiled.

  Mrs. Anderson handed the paper to Constance. When she found her photograph there, she grimaced. It was a highly unflattering shot. Her face showed serious surprise—her eyes wide, her mouth in a straight line—and her hat, George’s “puff of smoke,” looked far too big. After scrutinizing her own image with an inaudible groan, her eyes finally wandered to the other two women in the picture.

  Next to her, she found the young crew member she’d seen at the doctor’s office. At the infirmary, her hair had been covered in a cap, but the birthmark (which looked here like a blotch of printer’s ink) was undeniably hers. The perspective was thrown by the difference in their sizes; although the girl had been several feet in front of her, in the photo it looked as if they were walking in stride, nearly hand in hand. She studied the girl’s face; it looked nervous but determined. Constance thought her brave to be going off to sea at such a young age.

  The other side of the picture was underdeveloped, the woman there fading into white. Was it the elderly woman, stooped and sickly, who had also been at the doctor’s? It was too faint to say for sure, but the clothes were similar; she thought she recognized her purple coat, here a charcoal gray. That, and the skinny frame. Her eyes focused again on her own image, then she quickly folded the paper and handed it back to Mrs. Anderson.

  “Thank you for pointing that out,” she said pleasantly, then closed her eyes, facing the sun.

  She hoped Dr. Chabron would not have the time to bother with the newspaper today.

  Serving stew to third-class diners, Julie noticed how, in the twenty-four hours the passengers had been on board, they had already become members of stable groups, strangers drawn together by common languages and cultures. She handed out bowls to clusters of English speakers, Russians and Slavs, and those passengers from southern Europe who made themselves understood in a pan-Latin patois. The Germans and Austrians were joined not only by language but by the fact that, together, they had lost the Great War. Although three years had passed since the Armistice, they kept to themselves, feeling ostracized and avoiding conflict with the Allied diners.

  Julie went down each table, carefully ladling generous portions out of a tureen, timing her movements to the roll of the ship. (“How slow you are!” bristled Mme. Tremblay. “The others are hungry too!”) As she served bowls down one long table, she listened to a group of Mediterranean passengers bickering. As they eagerly reached out for their lunches, they debated whose national dishes were the best. Spaniards raised voices about their rices, Italians about their pastas, the Portuguese their codfish recipes. The French passengers sat back, looking on in amusement, confident in the knowledge that the greatest European cuisine was clearly their own.

  Though they were quieted by the full bowls in front of them, Julie was saddened by these bursts of national pride. She knew these passengers were abandoning their homelands, forced to look beyond their borders for better circumstances. Julie realized that the ship was a No Man’s Land, a gap between two worlds: their former lives and the next. What, then, did that mean for the people who worked on board? Were they forever in limbo, without country or home, tied to thankless tasks on a never-stopping ship?

  Julie made her way up the aisles, now refilling glasses, and remembered how she and her friends had envisioned these ships from land. The transatlantic liners had always seemed the very image of beauty, luxury, wealth, and power. But here under the waterline, it was nothing of the sort. Far from glamorous and exciting, it was drudgery; Julie, who had always shunned the idea of working in domestic service, was doing the exact same chores. Here, she was a maid, but one who worked in an enormous tumbling machine that rendered her breathing shallow and her bowels functionless. And instead of serving stew to a bourgeois family, she was serving it up to eight hundred people!

  Julie sighed and, looking up, was surprised to see Nikolai grinning at her from the corridor just outside the dining room. Her mouth fell open, then managed to grin back. She tried not to blush (impossible!) and quickly looked around to see whether anyone had noticed. She could hardly believe that they were all still chewing calmly, unaware that a man had come looking for her. She looked over at Mme. Tremblay’s thin frame standing guard near the kitchen doors, then at Simone, smiling with her mouth closed at a passenger’s pleasantry. Wheeling back around, she was relieved to find him still there. With the exaggerated face of a question mark, Nikolai pointed at her, then at his watch. Looking at her own, she saw she should be finished in an hour. After she’d made the sign for one, he pointed toward the door with a quizzical shrug, trying to make plans to meet.

  Julie was nodding with a smile, when suddenly she felt Mme. Tremblay beside her. She quickly snapped her attention back to her work, forcing herself to look serious.

  “Please don’t stop, Julie,” she said loudly. “The passengers to your right have empty glasses as well.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” she uttered, moving on to the next passenger.

  Lunch dragged after that with passengers fiddling with fruit peels and asking for second cups of coffee. Finally the last table was cleared and the dining room cleaned in preparation for the next meal. Before venturing out into the corridor, Julie took off her cap and ran her fingers through her silky hair. With a peek into the mirror over the riveted sideboard, she smiled at herself—trying to imagine what he saw—then groaned slightly. What did he see?

  Cautiously, she peered out into the hallway. He was there, leaning against the metal wall and whistling softly.

  “Hi there, Juliette!” he called, interrupting his tune. “Are you on break now?”

  “Finally,” she said, joining him at the wall and catching a faint petrol odor coming from his jacket. “But, we serve so many shifts, that once the last passengers are finished with lunch, the first ones are ready to start dinner.”

  “Well, do you have time for a little walk?”

  “Of course!” she said quickly, letting him take her hand. “I’d love it!” she breathed. “Let’s go outside. It’d be nice to get some fresh air.”

  “How are you feeling, then?” he asked, leading her out the door to the mooring deck.

  “Better, I guess.” She shrugged. Although she hadn’t thrown up since the day before, she still had bouts of dizziness and breathlessness that made her wary of food.

  “I’ve brought you the tea, Julie,” he said, producing a paper bag. “I hope it helps.”

  “Oh, thank you for remembering, Nikolai,” she said, taking the package and glancing up at his face as they surfaced out into the sun. “You’re so sweet. Are you sure you won’t need it? We may have rough seas yet.”

  “Ah, don
’t worry about this old sea dog,” he growled playfully, escorting her to an empty spot at the rails.

  “All right, then,” Julie said, leaning on the rail next to him, their arms already touching. “I’ll give it a try. There’s just something about the air down there . . .” She wrinkled her nose. “How is it in the engine room?”

  “Better than it used to be. You know, when I started working on steamers, they all had coal engines. There’d be a whole army of us—black-faced and sweating rivers—stoking those engines day and night. We called ourselves the Devil’s Crew. It was like working in the pits of Hell.” Nikolai smiled nostalgically.

  “Aren’t we running on coal?” Julie asked. “With those funnels blowing smoke up there, I just took it for granted.”

  She remembered her brothers, who all worked at the port, talking excitedly about ship engines. Perhaps Nikolai was also fascinated by such things? Standing next to him, listening to his magnetic voice and feeling his body heat, she was relieved to be producing words of any kind.

  “Oh no.” He shook his head. “Not on the Paris. This ship has a brand-new oil-fired turbine engine. No coal, no boilers pumping steam. The engine room is filled with huge cylinders and complicated little devices.”

  “Well, even in steerage we can hear it,” Julie said. “It must be really loud down there.”

  “You can’t hear anything! You can barely hear yourself think! But this!” he said, gesturing with his arm toward the blue water, then bringing it back to hang around her shoulder. “This is worth coming to sea!” He squeezed her closer with a smile. “A beautiful day with a beautiful girl! Say, shall I buy you some pastries to go with the tea?”

  “No, thanks,” she said with a pause. She didn’t want to admit that she had been living off saltines and soda water since she’d boarded. And now, with Nikolai’s arm around her, she couldn’t even imagine eating crackers. “I had a late lunch.”